What's in the Blood? Temporalities at Play in Diet-Related Risk Management Testing Practices

Abstract

In this paper, I look at two different sets of practices that are part of the risk management apparatus in place in Québec & Canada to apprehend and control risks associated with food consumption. More specifically, I contrast diabetes and chemical contaminants risk management testing practices, so as to compare how both frame and approach risks, in a context where recent research in social sciences, epigenetics and environmental sciences increasingly points to “environmental” pathways of disease causation while many chronic conditions remain highly individualized in public and health discourses. The analysis pays close attention to the different temporalities discursively created, considered, and neglected in these practices in order to understand how risk is approached and worked on. This highlights the power relations that inform how we care (or not) for (certain) bodies, inflecting in particular ways their—uneven—becomings. I argue that the Canadian biotechnological apparatus of testing practices meant to apprehend and control diet-related risks contributes to foreclosing the temporalities of health and illness considered and acted upon. As such, the apparatus contributes to (re)producing inequalities, here mostly health related ones, as well as creating differentiated biological materialities.